Wednesday, June 24, 2015

19.
After another of my famously lavish parties, I sometimes walk alone out to Promontory Point at exactly
10:00 p.m. Thursday and glance lakeward, out at a blinking light on some distant shore, and think of
Daisy Buchanan. That light winks on and off, unattainable, a powerful metaphor for|wait, is that
Morse code? [5 points for lights over a mile away; 15 points for lights over 5 miles away; 0 points for
lights that are only metaphors]
For this Scav Hunt item I used an Arduino to turn a laser pointer on and off in morse code:

I checked and saw at http://www.heywhatsthat.com/?view=PKDC86DD that the path from Adler Planetarium to the Point was just a touch over five miles and free. I could identify the Point fairly well in binoculars; I aimed the laser pointer by fixing to a tripod, testing the aiming by hitting nearer objects (a beach buoy nearby happened to be retroreflective which helped quite a bit) and then carefully moving the system towards the Point. I turned it off whenever boats went near the beam. To prove it was me, the judge requested I manually hit the key a few times--since I had only a programmed 'SCAV' (yes, it says GASH above), I manually connected the pointer to 5V & ground on the Arduino. It was powered via a 12V battery and a cigarette lighter USB charger to provide 5.1V.